Brontophobia

She wanted to see the ocean. The fluffy white foam of the waves, powdered sugar sands and pink sea shells from her favorite picture book. To her five year old mind it was a simple matter. She knew her directions. Her brother had taught her. The sun in morning was East and South was, naturally, the other way. And South was the ocean, her daddy had said.

So, while Sally Thomas, their lumbering cook and nursemaid had George sit at the dinner table to do his homework, Angela had loaded her bicycle basket with supplies for the trip and set off. She followed the driveway to the road, the road to where it turned at the woods and there in the dusty bar ditch she abandoned her bike.

She shouldered her brother's backpack and scrambled down the bank and up again and into the trees. By the time her mother had gotten home from school, Angela Pierrette Edmonds was nearly two miles away and hopelessly lost.

Adults were slow and incredibly dumb, it didn't take no college educated genius to figure that. George watched with increasing dismay as they ignored his insistence that he knew which way his baby sister had gone. He pointed out the picture book and the sandbox toys and was ignored by his momma and the policeman and not surprisingly, his daddy too.

After repeated hushings, he slipped out the back door and mounted his bike for his own search. It was spring, but early in the year, meaning it got dark too soon in the day, and chill to boot. As he peddled, he shivered and thought of his jacket, forgotten on the hook by the back door.

When he found her bicycle, tumbled down into the weeds beside the road, he considered returning to the house for help. But the sky was going dark and the flashes of lightening made by the storm rolling up from the gulf convinced him that there wasn't any time for such foolishness. And he was right, right as the rain that soon fell on his unprotected head.

Drenched clean through, shoes slogging melodiously as he crashed through the scrub, he hollered for Peanut until he was hoarse. Between his own racket and the terrible roar of the thunder, he nearly missed the sobbed response. He waited out the next earsplitting clap, then screamed the nickname again. His heart jumped at the reply, muted, but clear enough to know it was her voice calling back.

"Where are you?" He turned his face down to the ground, twisting this way and that to listen.

"Here," came the snuffling answer, which really was no answer at all, considering that 'here' involved an awful lot of soggy woods.

He blinked the rain out of his eyes, shouting out an aggravated, "Dangit, Peanut."

"S-ssorry, George."


"C'mere."

But the demand was met by more sniffles and a softly whimpered, "I can't."

"Why the hell not." He used the forbidden swear word loudly, wincing when lightning flashed overhead.

"B-bbecause the l-luh-lightening will g-get me."

He followed the explanation, bending down to peer under an upended tree that had created a bit of a cave with its dramatic death. "I won't let it get you." He made the promise solemnly, holding out his hand to the damp form huddled in the leaf mulch.

"Sswear?"

"Cross my heart."

Scratched, chubby hands reached out to grasp his and he pulled his little sister into a grateful, if muddy, hug. "I gotcha. Tch-tch... you're safe."

The trip home was harder, the darkness punctuated by strobbing flashes that lit the way, but also sent Angela huddling for the cover of his armpit. They moved in stumbling tandem, his arm wrapped protectively around her, his voice calm, though chattering from the cold, constantly repeating reassurance in her ear.

They met the search party nearly half-way out of the woods, the bicycles George had thought to leave laying plumb in the middle of the road having finally attracted the search in the correct direction. George gratefully gave over his tearful charge to the hugs of his parents and soon they were both huddled in dry blankets and loaded in the back seat of a police car for the ride home.

Later that night, when they were both clean and mercifully dry, Angela was tucked safe into her bed and George was hauled into his father's den. He bravely fought back the tears as his father blistered his ears and then his butt for the stupidity of going out looking for his sister on his own.

The storm blew itself out not long after, leaving only the muted hum of the tv downstairs where their father slept on the couch. In the quiet dark of his bedroom, George finally let the bitter tears fall while Angela comforted and soothed him. "I gotcha. Tch-tch... you're safe."